Presto Vivace points out this troubling new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Recently, Verizon was caught tampering with its customer's web requests to inject a tracking super-cookie. Another network-tampering threat to user safety has come to light from other providers: email encryption downgrade attacks. In recent months, researchers have reported ISPs in the U.S. and Thailand intercepting their customers' data to strip a security flag — called STARTTLS — from email traffic. The STARTTLS flag is an essential security and privacy protection used by an email server to request encryption when talking to another server or client. By stripping out this flag, these ISPs prevent the email servers from successfully encrypting their conversation, and by default the servers will proceed to send email unencrypted. Some firewalls, including Cisco's PIX/ASA firewall do this in order to monitor for spam originating from within their network and prevent it from being sent. Unfortunately, this causes collateral damage: the sending server will proceed to transmit plaintext email over the public Internet, where it is subject to eavesdropping and interception.

It’s easy to like cartoons. It’s hard to draw them (at least something better than stick figures). Sometimes the best cartoons are drawn out of basic shapes and lines that look easy to draw by anyone, and yet it takes genius to draw like that. And genius is the word I use to describe the author’s drawings and teachings in this classic book.
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The UN Security Council has voted to extend the EURFOR military mission in Bosnia. Russia abstained from voting to extend the EU peacekeeping force, saying European influence should not be imposed on the country.

We’ve Got Our Eye on You: The US Wants to Control, and Own, the World Online. "The NSA’s spying functions are an integral part of the apparatus of US military power....The fact that no country beside the US possesses a pervasive, global spying system proves that the argument that “all countries do it” is specious..."

blottsie writes: The Federal Communications Commission will abandon its earlier promise to make a decision on new net neutrality rules this year. Instead, FCC Press Secretary Kim Hart said, "there will not be a vote on open internet rules on the December meeting agenda. That would mean rules would now be finalized in 2015." The FCC's confirmation of the delay came just as President Barack Obama launched a campaign to persuade the agency to reclassify broadband Internet service as a public utility. Opensource.com is also running an interview with a legal advisor at the FCC. He says, "There will be a burden on providers. The question is, 'Is that burden justified?' And I think our answer is 'Yes.'"

Molten lava from Kilauea has been sluggishly inching its way towards Pahoa since June, though this is the first time it has come encountered a home. The bulbous, black-colored lava started igniting the house as soon as it made contact with the residence, eventually setting the entire building ablaze, forcing its roof to collapse, and absorbing its remains into the flow itself.

All told, it took about 45 minutes for the 1,100-square-foot house to come down, the Associated Press reported. The temperature of the lava has been recorded at some 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius).

The house itself belonged to Margaret and John Byrd, who lived there for eight years along with their family and numerous pets. Although the Byrds had evacuated the home in September, some family members showed up on Monday to watch their home burn away. Notably, the Byrds’ daughter, Dianna Wilcox, offered a surprisingly unflappable observation regarding the event.

"If you're going to live on a volcano, it's about her, not us," she told AP, referring to the Hawaiian volcano goddess, known as Pele. "If she wants her land back, then get out of the way. I like to call it `paradise tax.'"

The family is currently in the midst of constructing another house, this time on a part of the volcano that was previously covered by lava.

Other residents, however, were not so relaxed about the continued advancement of Kilauea’s lava flow.

"I'm scared right now," Imelda Raras, who lives on the same street as the now non-existent Byrd house, said to USA Today. "What will happen next? We will be waiting."

Although Kilauea has been erupting since 1983 – making it one of the world’s most active volcanoes – the vast majority of its lava has flowed right into the ocean. This past June, however, a new vent opened up, placing the molten rock on a collision course with Pahoa. The flow’s leading edge is just under 500 feet away from a road that leads into downtown.

Last week, President Barack Obama declared the situation on Big Island a major disaster, freeing up federal aid for the stricken area. Repairs, protective measures, and aid for those displaced by the lava are now much easier to come by.

Molten lava from Kilauea has been sluggishly inching its way towards Pahoa since June, though this is the first time it has come encountered a home. The bulbous, black-colored lava started igniting the house as soon as it made contact with the residence, eventually setting the entire building ablaze, forcing its roof to collapse, and absorbing its remains into the flow itself.

All told, it took about 45 minutes for the 1,100-square-foot house to come down, the Associated Press reported. The temperature of the lava has been recorded at some 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius).

The house itself belonged to Margaret and John Byrd, who lived there for eight years along with their family and numerous pets. Although the Byrds had evacuated the home in September, some family members showed up on Monday to watch their home burn away. Notably, the Byrds’ daughter, Dianna Wilcox, offered a surprisingly unflappable observation regarding the event.

"If you're going to live on a volcano, it's about her, not us," she told AP, referring to the Hawaiian volcano goddess, known as Pele. "If she wants her land back, then get out of the way. I like to call it `paradise tax.'"

The family is currently in the midst of constructing another house, this time on a part of the volcano that was previously covered by lava.

Other residents, however, were not so relaxed about the continued advancement of Kilauea’s lava flow.

"I'm scared right now," Imelda Raras, who lives on the same street as the now non-existent Byrd house, said to USA Today. "What will happen next? We will be waiting."

Although Kilauea has been erupting since 1983 – making it one of the world’s most active volcanoes – the vast majority of its lava has flowed right into the ocean. This past June, however, a new vent opened up, placing the molten rock on a collision course with Pahoa. The flow’s leading edge is just under 500 feet away from a road that leads into downtown.

Last week, President Barack Obama declared the situation on Big Island a major disaster, freeing up federal aid for the stricken area. Repairs, protective measures, and aid for those displaced by the lava are now much easier to come by.

An anonymous reader writes: The folks at the USPS have responded to the recent breach that exposed data on 800K employees and another some 2.8 million customers. They have suspended telecommuting for all employees until further notice while they replace their VPN with a more secure version. "Additionally, the postal service will upgrade some of its equipment and systems in the coming weeks and months as part of a broad security overhaul in response to the breach."